One of the more deplorable acts by political candidates is to publish either in print or online negative campaign ads that seek to diminish or denigrate their opponents by spinning their views and then twisting their images. We’ve all seen this happen primarily at the national level in presidential and congressional elections.

We don’t expect to see it take place locally. We find it unseemly and contemptible that local candidates for public office will try and belittle their political opponents.

Such was the case in a mailer sent out by Yolo County 5th District supervisor candidate Angel Barajas campaign this past week in which he compares his political views with those of 15-year incumbent Duane Chamberlain. The mailer included an altered photograph of Chamberlin. Newspapers have rules against running such material as ads, which is why you’ll only find them in your mailboxes.

Barajas told The Democrat that his campaign did, indeed, send out the mailer to Democrat’s in the district because residents wanted to know Chamberlain’s political party. In our view, there are a number of approaches that could have been used to identify Chamberlain’s party affiliation, but deceiving readers with an altered photograph would not be one of them.

That altered image shows Chamberlain wearing a “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) hat that has so often been affiliated with the campaign of Republican President Donald Trump. The effort was a lame attempt to link Chamberlain with President Trump.
The flyer goes on to make other assertions regarding Chamberlain positions and how they contrast with the Barajas campaign. Whether any of these allegations are true is irrelevant locally. They merely try to inject the divisiveness of national politics into a local race. That’s petty and does nothing to instill cooperative politics at the local level.

We expected better of Barajas. Frankly, it makes us question our previous endorsement. Had we known he would take this political low road we would have offered no position on the race, or even supported Chamberlain.

We have a message for future campaigns and candidates for local offices: Take the high road.